Chet Baker's Birfday Pie

Once a year, on his birfday, Chet Baker gets a special meal on fine Portmeirion china at the Big People's Table. Often it's roast beef with gravy and green beans.

Chicken pot pie is about his favorite thing of all. On his tenth birthday (December 12, 2014), Chet got a slice of pot pie.

As always, I am narrating his every move like an idiot. Like he's some canine Charlie McCarthy. Oh well. I can't help it. I'm a Crazy Dog Lady now, have been since December 2004, and it's just getting worse all the time.

I hope you enjoy this video half as much as Chet enjoys eating at the kitchen table. Please pardon my cackle.

              

Chet Baker: Now We Are Ten

From The not Writer's Almanac: Today is the birthday of Chet Baker, Boston Terrier,  born December 12, 2004, in Stewartstown, Pennsylvania, by Peanut Brittle out of Miss Chili Bean. Grandparents: Handsome Boy and Maeve Bean.

Newborn Bacon with fresh bellybutton photo courtesy Jane Streett, Pups Will Travel 

Baker is a poet, musician, entertainer, chipmunk exterminator and writer, but he is known best as a muse to the writer Julie Zickefoose, who toils in relative obscurity except for the blogposts she writes about her canine companion.

photo by Bill Thompson III

From an early age, Baker loved the camera, and as a small puppy, upon hearing the Schwingg! Zickefoose's first camera, a small Olympus point and shoot, made when it was turned on, he trotted over and posed, ready to make Internet history.

and yes I am fully aware of the double entendres in that sentence

Chet Baker has two siblings, Liam

and Phoebe

and a doting Daddeh

all of whom he loves very much

but he will not leave the yard without Mether.

photo by Bill Thompson III

Of their relationship, Baker wrote, "It is good for a dog of my caliber to have a reasonably literate person with nimble fingers, whom he may enlist to type his thoughts for him. Our kind has been held back by our clumsy and inflexible paws, and it is only when one finds a meet scribe that the world may truly know what goes on in the mind of a Boston terrier, or any other dog, for that matter."

I burdied something. I am not saying what it was, but it may have been lima beans.

Chet Baker keeps fit and active by running regularly

and posing for many dozens of photographs each and every day. He writes,

"When all is said and done I will probably be the most-photographed dog in history, or at least in Ohio. What Mether will do with all these photos, only Heaven knows. Perhaps there will be a Chet Baker Museum in my future. Or at least a book about me. People would like that."

 Once she finishes her next bird book, Zickefoose will follow the plan her dog has set out for her and resume work on a book about Chet Baker's life. She writes, "It's interesting to write someone else's memoir, to go through his life and pick out the high points and the low points, and to realize that his life is really yours, too. That's how close we are. He is my constant companion, my familiar, my muse, and I don't want to imagine a world without him. So I'd better get cracking and describe this one the best I can. Because there never was a dog like Chet Baker."

Happy birthday, my beloved Chet Baker. You just get better and better. 

Let's write some more chapters, shall we?

 Connecting to the spirits at Waxler Church, December 7, 2014

Chet Baker Turns 8!

I know I promised a Baker Meets Drusilla video. But that will have to wait. Today is Chet Baker's eighth birfday and it is time to stop and celebrate the wonderfulness of Chet Baker, Boston Terrier. Forget the durn cussy bat.

Them things is hyper.

 Except when they're not. Then, he's the best living teddy bear you ever held. Spotteh Brisket, anyone? Excuse me, I have to gnaw on my dog now.

Dogs teach us how to love fully, how to love with an open heart, without fear of being turned away. I have watched Chet teach Liam that gentle lesson. They've grown up together. Liam was only five when Chet came into his life!

The Bacon and I are roughly the same physical age this year. We've decided to be fabulous fifty-somethings. The best damn fifty-somethings you ever saw. Grabbing life and chewing it to smithereens.

Mether. Is that all the faster you can run? Pick it up. I am waiting.

We exercise together every day. But when we kick back, we kick back. Chet Baker don't care. He's sleepy. And he doesn't even have wine as an excuse.

 Oh, to be loved like this puppeh is loved. I would wish that for everyone.

Happeh Birfday, Chet Baker! Let's go for eight more.

Chet Baker: Now We Are Seven!

Chet Baker turns seven today. I can think of no better birthday present for his fans than this video of him in action.



I am the person whose right big toe appears in the lower left frame. Who is trying to laugh, snort and wheeze quietly behind the camera, and mostly failing. Phoebe is the fluffer, providing His Chetness with just enough help to keep him hoping he will get a bikkit in the end. I've probably watched this video a dozen times (it has 16 views on YouTube so far!) but I still laugh until I cry. Biased? Sure. But he's a funny dog.

This is the distilled essence of The Bacon: knowing, ornery, vocal, and supremely expressive. Frustrated with his lack of opposable thumbs, but fully capable, with those amazing eyes and that rough voice, of enlisting the help he needs to get what he wants. Watch it to the end. The Bacon gets his bikkit, and then some.

Happy birthday, Chet Baker. You are the sunshine of our lives, court jester and kiss dispenser supreme. I promise we will have your birfday party just as soon as I get back from Columbus.

If you're into radio and live video streaming, I'll appear on WOSU's All Sides with Ann Fisher (squee!) at 11 AM today, Monday, December 12. Listen here.  I know. What am I doing taking a gig on Chet Baker's birthday? It oughta be a national holiday.  And tonight at 7:30, I'll speak to the Columbus Natural History Society. You can find out more here.

Party when I get home, Bacon. I promise. You can open the package from the Virginia Chapter of the Chet Baker Fan Club. And I got you more bikkits. (Trader Joe's Sweet Potato and Turkeh).

A Dog's Birthday

 Musing tonight on Pet Value. Chet Baker is sitting at my feet, watching a rabbit under the feeders. He's stuck to me like glue today, occasionally launching himself up into my lap for a seriously good cuddle. How did he know I needed that? He just did, that's all.

I really had to have a dog like Chet to appreciate true Pet Value. An interactive dog. The kind of dog you can bake a cake for. Who gets it, and behaves perfectly appropriately.

Phoebe baked the cake, and she was feeling experimental, so she mixed blue and red food coloring and got a perfect Eighties mauve in the almond buttercream frosting. You know, the kind of mauve that is paired with gray and teal in older motels. Gag.  If you haven't already gathered by the peeks into our house that this blog affords, color is Very Important to us here on Indigo Hill. Yes, even the name of the place is a color.

Despite appearances, the cake was absolutely delicious. And it was also for Wendy, a December baby, and vocalist/keyboardist/arranger in The Raincrows, our new acousticky band. Both she and Chet Baker are Sagittarians. I get along very well with Sagittarians, even if I cannot spell it to save my life.

Miss Wendy, will you help me blow out the candles on our cake? My lips are not very cooperative.

I purely love this photo.  

He showered her with kisses, of course, for helping him get his birthday wish.

Which was a Gummy Bone. We wrapped it in brown paper and put it on the table, and Chet took over from there. He catpawed it but couldn't pull it close enough to him to pick it up.

A Boston terrier's reaction to nearly everything: Lick it. Oooh, I want that little present soooo badly!

Finally, Chet climbed up on the table (where you can see the last snowstorm that covered the midsection of the country on Intellicast radar!) and claimed the prize for his own.

                                                                              

I used to buy Chet the hard white Nylabones until KatDoc warned us that they can cause shear fractures of teeth. Nobody needs a split tooth! So now he gets the rubbery ones. And his crounching is much quieter.

I didn't realize until I got this photo up on the screen that there is a rather strange image on our TV of a chimp doing something to a child; being told to act solicitous, I suppose. Eek. I'm thinking Travis...I love this photo for that, for the live rosemary topiary Christmas tree, newly lit and decorated; for Chet's wonderful hands. And all the colors.

And I love this photo, of a sweet boy (growing up so fast!) and his  beloved dog. Our lives are so much richer for having three boys in the family. Please note tool-using behavior in a canid; Chet uses the couch cushions as a kind of vise for his big chewbones. So we must redefine tool-using, or redefine man,* or simply accept that this sleek little animal is much, much more than just a dog.

*a rawther obscure reference to Louis S. B. Leakey's reaction to Jane Goodall's revelation that she had documented tool-using in wild chimpanzees.

Now We are Six, Chet Baker!

 He is perfect. At six, Chet Baker is exactly the dog I would have designed, had I been able to do that in one stroke. Instead, it took many small strokes to paint him.

For we build our dogs from the ground up with the love and attention we pour into them. He is everything to me, as I am to him.

 We love all the same things: raindrops on morning glories, and deer in the meadow.

 Innocent young birds who need to be watched, loved and protected.

Autumn walks on Dean's Fork. Let me OUT! There are horses I need to nuzzle.

                           Live music. After kissing everyone in the band, Chet keeps an eye on Mether at all times during rehearsal.                           

You rang? Do you need someone to sit on your lap now? I am the dog to do that.

 

photo from the New River festival by the most fabulous Sara Stratton

You probably cannot hear me, but I hum along to your songs. I know most of them by heart now.

Chet Baker, I know you by heart, too. Long may you run beside me. Happy birthday, Best Dog.

A Boston Terrier Birthday

We're celebrating Chet Baker's fourth birthday with a retrospective of his puppehhood. When Jane Streett, Chet's breeder, sent us this snapshot, we swooned for hours. Days. Weeks. Put him on a bun and serve him up.You see, I formed such an instant bond with Jane at Pups Will Travel in our first phone conversation that we bought our doggeh online, nay, in utero!! and didn't meet him in person for nine weeks. I liked Jane's philosophy. She breeds for temperament and sound conformation, working overtime to keep her line free of genetic defects and her puppies full of good humor and intelligence. She liked mine, especially the parts about the 80-acre nature sanctuary and the hikes in the woods and the two sweet kids and my working at home. Not to mention the fact that Bill had been bugging me to get a dog for 13 years, and I had finally decided I was ready. Notice in this picture how Liam is holding his hands. The Bacon, like most puppies, was a tad on the chewy-nippy side to start with. He tried but ultimately failed to attain a pack rank right below Phoebe but above Liam. Nope, you're bottom rung, buddy. But you'll like bottom rung.

I tried like crazy to hide my online machinations from Phoebe, but she was too smart for me, and busted me six days before Chet was even born. She started giving me even more spontaneous hugs than usual, and showed just a little too much interest in a Boston terrier in a dog show on TV ("Mommy, I really LIKE those dogs!" This, from a kid who'd been buggin' me for a golden retriever for two years...) and I got suspicious that she had been reading my email. Sure enough. I walked into the studio one day and caught her pirouetting around, eyes closed, whispering, "I'm getting a PUPPY!!!" I had wanted to surprise the kids at Christmas with a photo of him, wrapped up in a box under the tree, but instead we got to anticipate Chet's birth together, which was way more fun.

Phoebe at 8, the old soul. Would you buy this sweet girl a puppy? Yeah, me too.

Finally, on December 12, 2004, we got the email we'd been waiting for. Chili Bean had delivered her first litter, just two babies. And we had second pick. We waited anxiously to hear which puppy went to the family with first pick. But the kids had already decided that the little black puppy with one white glove was the one they wanted. Fingers were crossed...
photo by Jane Streett

Sometimes things work out. We got the one with the black neck. Kind of looks like his mammy, don't he? As you can see, Chet was a home-bred dog, born not in a kennel or a manger, but in Jane's home. He was therefore spoiled rotten from Hour One. Here he is not quite a month old, January 5, 2005.Photo by Jane Streett. I requested a picture of Chet's belly meat and she came through. Had to make sure he had a tasty brisket. It was killing us to wait until he was weaned and ready in mid-February! The kids and I drove over to eastern PA and picked him up on the morning of February 17, 2005. I can't remember any drive to the East Coast before or since that went that fast. We flew on wings of anticipation.

Chet on Day One at Indigo Hill, wearing his tube sock sweater. Superdog! My musical hub Bill of the Birds named him within a few minutes of seeing his first picture. "I've always wanted to name a dog Chet Baker," he said, and that was that.I can't resist another tube sock shot. Even though it's more like a sausage casing...I have to say he was a rather appealing puppy. Just the thing for a 46-year-old mother of two with a relapse of of chronic baby fever. A puppeh who looks like a babeh ought to do it.Yep, that babydog pushes every one of my buttons. And yes, I stayed home with him, trying to absorb every molecule of his cuteness, and I'm still here. Stayed home for my kids, stayed home for the dog, did it for me, too.

And now that puppy, four years later, is asleep on my coat in the chair right next to me as I write. And I do not know what I would do without him. I run my hand over his satiny back and he gives a rattling dog sigh of contentment, and I think about this animal that we have bred to want nothing more than to keep our company. And I think about the things that humans have developed: The Sistine Chapel ceiling fresco, the Chunnel, Swarovski EL binoculars, trigeneric orchid hybrids, creme brulee and the Boston terrier, to name just a few. They are surely among our finest works.
Thank you, Jane.

Happeh Birthday, Chet Baker!

Newborn Bacon!! Ennh!  Photo by Jane Streett

On Friday, December 12, 2008, Chet Baker turned four. It's hard to believe our puppeh is now 28 in people years--a young man in his prime. We did not have a formal party this year, being swept up in a great deal of holiday-related splup, but he did get an Orca chew toy, a lunch of Hamburger Rice Dinner (HRD), and about two hundred extra kisses.

I thought it would be good to take a look at Chet Baker as a newborn. I can hear the squeals from most every state in the Union and a few foreign countries... The only way you can tell it's Chet is the Michael Jackson glove on his right forepaw. It is hard to believe that this small weaselly creature will ever grow up to be my heartbeat. Like any mother, however, I was in love from the first look.
Photo by Jane Streett

As you can see in this photo of a week-old Chet Baker, the Tennessee turd-tail is intact, even though Chet is barely a handful at this point. Most Boston terriers are born with a naturally short "screw tail;" they get that from their bulldog genes. People who see Chet's gorgeous oversized stand-up ears are surprised to learn that there are no knives involved there, either. They're perfect from the get-go. Don't get me started on cropping dogs' ears. We just won't go there on my shiny happy blog.

Baker plumped up nicely. Here he is on January 5, 2005.

Photo by Jane Streett

I cannot say that he has been nice to a cat since this picture was taken February 8 '05, however.Man, has he got the domed forehead workin'.           Photo by Jane Streett

Beautiful Garbonzo gives a foretaste of Chet's future glory in this picture. They're not related, but they could be by their looks. What beautiful dogs Jane keeps.

Chet is only pretending to be submissive in this picture. He is a little bossyboots.

Photo by Jane Streett

Next: Some More Puppeh Pictures of Chet Baker. I'm doling them out in two doses so your teeth don't fall out from the sweetness. Those of you who are not a soupy mass of doughnut batter at the prospect of more chubby Chetter, just hang on. There will be more Guyana birds and animals coming up Tuesday night.